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I ieorgia Jistorical ^ffnetj.f 



ON ITS 



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NINETEENTH ANNIVERSARY, 



FEBRUABY 12, 1858, 



B V J o lin E . ' W a r d 



tj*^%-'^p>-'i**^^f**^ 



SAVANNA H : 

GEORGE N. NICHOLS, PRINTER. 





A^ r> D R E 8 S 



DEI IVERED BEFORE THE 



Georgia Historical Society, 



ON ITS 



NINETEENTH A.NNIVERSARY, 



FEBRUARY 12, 1858, 



By J oil 11 1^. Ward. 



y OFCO.^ 




^M^ 



^ S A V A N N A II : 

GEORGE N. NICHOLS, PRINTER. 

1857. 



V 



CORRESPONDENCE. 



Savannah, 13th February, 1858. 
Dear Sir: — The undersigned, Committee of the ''Georgia His- 
torical Society," take pleasure in commmiicating to you the following 
resolution, unanimously adopted last evening : 

'' Jiesolved, That the thanks of this Society be tendered to the 
Hon. John E. Ward, for his chaste and eloquent address delivered 
before the Society on its Nineteenth Anniversary, and that he be 
requested to furnish a copy for publication. " 

With sentiments of great respect and esteem, 

We are, yours very truly. 
I. K. TEFFT, 
GEO. A. GORDON, 
WM. NEYLE HABERSHAM, 
EDWARD PADELFORD, Jr., 
WM. S. BASINGER. 
Hon. John E. Ward. 



Savannah, 13th February. 1858. 
Qentlemen : — In compliance with the request of the " Georgia 
Historical Society," I herewith furnish you witli a cop\ of my address 
for publication. 

Very respectfully, your obedient servant, 

JOHN E. WARD. 
To Messers. I. K. Tefft, Geo. A. Gordon, Wm. Neyle Habersham, 
Edward Padelford, Jr;, Wm. S. Basinger, Committee. 



^ites. 



'©^^^t 



In 1839, our fellow-citizen I. K. Tefft, the distinguished 
collector of Autographs, having in his possession many 
valuable documents relating to the ColoFiial and Revolutionary 
history of Georgia, realizing the necesity of some institution 
in which the records of the State might be preserved, sum- 
moned to his aid a few kindred spirits, and with them formed 
the Georgia Historical Society. 

To say many words upon the importance to our country 
and to the world at large of such an Association, would be 
unnecessary — its very name contains its panegyric. History 
not only commemorates great actions, it incites to them. 
Had Homer never chronicled in his immortal poem the 
wisdom of Ulysses, the strength of Ajax and the irresisti- 
ble valor of the son of Thetis, Greece would have had 
fewer heroes. A nation without history, is a nation with- 
out life. Long before Guttenburg had moulded types, before 
Costar had cut the blocks of wood in which lay yet in 
embryo, the world's master, — printing, — before language had 
become the easily wielded instrument of thought that now it 
is — man, thirsting for the immortality for which he was 
created, sought some means of perpetuating his name, of 
giving to that^ vitality and power, when he himself should 
lie beneath the clods of the valley, as powerless as they. — 
This desire speaks on the walls of buried Ninevah and ruined 
Egypt. This endowed with creative power the painter's 
brush and the sculptor's chisel. This reared the triumphal 
arch, decked the temple and woke the echoes with song 
whose tones call forth yet a responsive thrill in the world's 
loftiest spirits. The old Scandinavian Sea Kings, though 



6 

they won kingdom and treasure, felt themseves but half re- 
warded for their strife, till the Scald had struck his sounding 
harp and given their names a place beside the heroes of the 
past. In a double sense the Poet was the " maker " — for he 
made not the poem only ; he breathed life into the hero 
whose deeds that poem commemorated. At length the 
Muse of History was born — of soberer brow and more quiet 
mien. She does not fire the blood with momentary frenzy, 
but her steadier impulse gives courage to ihe heart, vigor 
to the nerves, and qnick sagacity to the mind. She records 
the triujnphs of successful soldiers who have exchanged 
the sword for a sceptre, the military garb for the Im- 
perial purple. The young Corsican, gifted hy nature with 
an indomitable will and a niaster genius, reads and becomes 
a Buonaparte. She tells of the nobler power by which men 
have acquired that last great victory — the victory over them- 
selves — by which all selfish impulses have sunk beneath the 
loftier aspiration to become a nation^s benefactor. A boy, 
nurtured in free America, learns the lesson, and comes forth 
with the calm, serene wisdom, the lofty sense of duty, the 
steady, unwavering courage of a Washington. 

And now, to-day, withdrawing for awhile from the crowded 
marts of business, forgetting for a brief hour the cares of the 
present, let us stand before this Muse of History and from 
those tablets on which she has engraved as with a pen of dia- 
mond the memories of the past, let us seek to read the page 
that records the life and character of this, our native State — 
the youngest of that fair band of sisters that in 1776 shook 
off their allegiance to the British crown. She was not the 
last to enter on her new career ; nor has she been the 
slowest in her progress. Beautiful was her domain even 
in the wildness of uncultivated nature, when no foot 
but die red man's trod her green Savannas or penetrated 
her leafy forests, and no keel, save that of his light canoe, 
had divided her sparkling waters ; *' when beneath the 
same sun that now rolls over our heads, the Indian hunter 
pursued the panting deer — when gazing on the same mooa 



fhat now smiles tor us, the Indian lover wooed his dusky 
mate.'* On the North and West she lifted herself hito lofty 
hills, rich with the precious metals, and on the East and South 
lay a chain of green islands — emeralds in her queenly coro- 
nal. "Broad rivers swept through her plains their fertilizing 
currents, and over her rocky steeps cataracts toamed and 
brawled, or, dividing in their course, fell softly in fairy foun- 
tains." Nature is unchanged. The beauty of the river and 
the hill remain, and the soft titUs ot' an almost tropical sky 
were then, as now, mirrored in the stream. And so they 
waited for the hour and tlie man — and they came. 

For ages — how many, who may say ? a tribe of the great 
family of the Muscogees dwelt in. or more properly roamed 
over, this beautiful land. The hills never revealed to them 
the secret of I heir treasures, nor did they suspect the abun- 
dance that lay within the bosom ol* the earth, ready to start 
into life to reward the cultivator. More tluui two centuries 
had passed since Columbus had dared the spirits ot the deep, 
and forced them to surrender to him the mystery they had 
guarded so long and so well — the secret ol' ii new world. 
More than a century had rolled around since Knglishmen 
had landed on these VV'estern shoi'es. The settlers of James- 
town had grown into a flourishing State. The handful of 
fugitives from religious persecution which had landed at Ply- 
mouth rock, had become a nation and had sent out South and 
West the genius of two new States, Rhode Island and Con- 
necticut. The New Amsterdam of the Dutch on the Hudson, 
had changed its name and its governmerit, and become the 
New York of the English. Penn had established his peace- 
t'ul settlement on the banks oi' the Delaware. IS'ew Jersey 
had become consolidated by the surrender ot' its rights of 
government to the English Crown. Lord Baltimore had 
opened an asyknn for Roman Catholics on the Chesapeake, 
Descendants of the pious Huguenots of France and of the 
loyal cavaliers of England, associated under the cumbrous 
constitution prepared for them by Locke — a great metaphy- 
sician but a poor statesman — had extended their settlements 



as far South as Port Royal, now Beaufort. In some of these 
settlements the spirit of enterprise or the love of gain had 
prompted their founders. In others, loftier motives — the de- 
sire of civil liberty, or the Heaven sustained determination 
to secure '^ Freedom to worship God " — had been the promp- 
ters. But now a higher lesson than even that of christian 
liberty was to be given — the lesson of Christian charity. The 
Pilgrim Fathers of New England came thither from the state- 
ly homes of England, not as the flourishes of the rhetorician 
and the dream of the poet have represented, to assert the rights 
of conscience and the claims of man, as man, to freedom of 
faith, they came to assert the right — nay the determina- 
tion of their individual selves — to found a church without a 
Bishop, to preach in a black coat and to pray without a book- 
They sought not toleration at all, but freedom, nay dominion, 
for themselves. If this be doubted, let the fanatical Quakers, 
and the one catholic spirit among them, Roger Williams, 
decide the doubt. Even so — all honor to the brave — earnest 
men and the meeker but not less heroic women, who pre- 
ferred a winter voyage in a frail bark, a home on a bleak 
shore with an icy earth beneath their feet, a stormy sky 
above them and a savage foe howling all around them, to 
one instant's sacrifice of what seemed to them the claims of 
God and of conscience. They had attained *' the beginning 
of Wisdom " which the Song of Sirach asserts to be *' the 
Fear oi the Lord" — but "the end of the law is Charity,'^ 
and it was in the benign spirit of self-denying, charity, tliat 
civilized man first found a home under these softer skies 

We have said that, the hour came and the man. He was 
a man of rare endowment, combining the chivalric quali- 
ties of the knight and the gentleman, with the accomplish- 
ments of the scholar, and the benevolence of the christian. 
In the exercise of this last trait, he had preceded Howard in 
the examination of the jails of England. To judge by the 
jurisprudence of England at this period, it would seem that 
human life was considered as far less valuable than property. 
The fainting mother who seized with frenzied hand the loaf 



for which she could not pay, to save, not lierself. but her 
child from the clutch of death, the law condemned to a felon's 
doom. The simple-hearted, unsuspecting gentleman, whom 
a dishonest steward, or a speculating attorney had involved 
in debts whicli he could neither understand nor pay, was 
immured from tlie cheerful light of day, compelled to forego 
the manly exercises which had given vigor to his frame, and 
courage to his heart, and to sit down within the blank 
walls of a jail, with no companion but the memory of joys 
gone forever, and apprehensions not the less terrible because 
they were undefined. Whose heart has not been touched by 
the picture which the wonderful genius of Dickens has so 
lately exhibited of the terrible iniiuences of such a doom — of 
intellect withdrawhig, of honor growing dull, and self-respect 
dying out, till the shadow of those dark walls, the impress 
of that meagre life stamped tlieniselves upon soul and body, 
and the man lived a scorti to others, a sad mockery to him- 
self From such a fate the benevolent Oglethorpe rescued 
many a gallant gentleman of England, some of whom, per- 
chance, had been his own personal friends, some, perhaps, 
had ventured and lost all in their loyalty to a cause which 
Gen. Oglethorpe was well known to favor — the cause of the 
exiled Stuarts. It was a glorious tho];ght to bear the prisoner 
from a land ii. which though liberated, the dark cold shadow 
of the prison walls must ever have fallen upon his path, to 
the beauty and the freedom, the sunlight and the bloom of 
this fair land. Hither they came, the genUeman of England, 
whose worst fault was, that, honest himself, he could not sus- 
pect others of dishonesty. The gallant Highlander of Scot- 
land, whose last hope of seeing " the king have his own 
again," had been trodden out beneath the hoofri of Cumber- 
land's cavalry at Culloden — the gay son of Erin, ready alike 
for the battle-field or the convivial feast, for the enjoyment of 
wealth while he possessed it, or the adventurous pursuit of it 
when it had fled from him— true hearts— manly spirits— it 
was a good thing to open to them these fair homes. But the 
benevolent design of Oglethorpe ceased not here ; his charity 
2 



10 

was world-wide — wherever man bowed beneath an oppres- 
sor, wherever tyranny uttered her commands, or persecution 
Hghted her fires, it sent forth the invitation, ''Come with us, 
and we will do thee good." And from the depths of the 
German forests, and the vine-clad borders of the Rhine, they 
came, in a sublime faith, journeying through hostile knds, 
with fearless tranquihty, and singing amid the storm and the 
sea '^their hymns of lofty cheer." 

The Indian wigwam was then the only dwelling on these 
shores. But what need was there of dwellings in the soft, 
balmy air, and beneath skies which in February seem bright 
with a summer's sun ! Would that for one brief hour, we 
could resusitate the buried past, and bring its vanished scenes 
and characters before you — that we could command the mag- 
ic wand of genius at whose touch the present and the actual 

"Should dissolve, 
And like an unsubstantial pageant faded, 
Leave not a rack behind." 

and in its place should rise the forest, under whose o'er- 
arching boughs should pass before us, now the dusky faces of 
the Yamacraws — now the Salzburger with his simple garb 
and earnest countenance, and now the Highlander with his 
picturesque tartan, and amongst them all, should move the 
gallant, good old English gentlemen — soothing the dissatisfied, 
cheering the faint-hearted, helping the weak, and directing 
all. He leads forth the Lutherans, assisting with his own 
hands to clear the wood through which their course lay to 
the spot where they would erect their Ebenezer. He heads 
the brave Highlanders as they march against the invading 
Spaniards. Touched by the submission, the helpbssness and 
the ignorance of his savage allies, he conducts them to the 
foot of the English throne, endeavoring in their behalf to 
awaken the sympathies and secure the aid of all true chris- 
tian hearts. And christians there are who hear his appeal 
and answer in a spirit as generous as his own, Wesley, with 
his full, warm heart; Whitfield, with his fervid eloqufuce and 
his more fervid charity, have left memories of themselves on 



11 

these fair shores. To the latter especially we owe the birth of 
an institution which neither we nor onr posterity will willingly 
let die— the Orphan House, within whose walls many of either 
sex have found a refuge from ignorance and vice. Years 
glide awy — the christian soldier returns to his native land, 
with a heart still full of wise and kindly schemes lor the 
•benefit of those whom he regarded as his children. Full of 
years, and full of honors, he passes from earth to Heaven. 
The little colony ceases to be the pet and plaything of 
royal caprice. It had dwindled under protection ; it thrives 
through neglect, and grows strong amid difficulties. The 
founder of an empire must be thrown out to the storms, and 
have the wolf for his nurse. Before the time came for break- 
ing oiT the chains which had been rivited upon us during 
our colonial dependence, the little colony had risen to the 
dignity of a State, though more than two-thirds of its terri- 
tory was still the hunting ground of the Indian, or the home 
of wild beasts— a State, though its army was but a few hun- 
dreds in number, and its marine consisted of a few peaceful 
merchant ships — for 

"What constitutes a State? 
Not high raised battlements or labored mound, 

Thick wall or moated gate ; 
Not cities proud, with spires and turrets crown'd, 

Not bays and broad armed forts, 
Where, laughing at the storm, rich navies ride ; 

Not starred and spangled courts. 
Where low-browed baseness wafts perfume to pride; 

No — MEN — high-minded men — 

Men who their duties know, 
But know their rights, and knowing, dare maintain, 

Pi event the long aimed blow, 
And crush the tyrant, while they rend the chain. 

These constitute a State." 

And these Georgia could boast. They might be checked at 
every move for a while, for superior power was against them. 
They might find the faint-hearted, extinguishing with their 
cold coward breath the crlow of patriotism which they had kin- 
dled ; but no obstructions, no discouragements, could shake 



12 

the constancy of their steadfast souls. Others might continue 
slaves; but for i/iem, they would be free, though to achieve 
freedom they must '' shuffle off this mortal coil,- ' and escape 
from thraldom through the gate of death. Noble men ! their 
names live in our hearts. We read with a throb of pride 
their assertion of the rights of man to the enjoynieiUof "life, 
liberty, and property," and their temperate, yet firm appeals . 
to the British government in behalf of rlieir oppressed 
brethren of the Northern States. There is scarce a man 
wearing the form of man. who, when a tyrant's hand falls 
heavily upon himself will not rouse himself to action, and 
shake it ofl\or perish in the attempt: bur the glory of 
these men was, that no touch had yet des<x'rated 
their persons, or endangered their i)roperty, when they 
avowed their intention to make common cause with the 
struggling friends of freedom. On the one side was peace, 
the quiet enjoyment of weaith. the smooth words and the 
ready rewards of the British officials, wielding the whole 
organized power of the land ; and as the price of all these 
benefits, the simple acknowledgment that they were the gifts 
of royal bounty. On the other, a long, deadly and doubtful 
struggle, in which '-property, life, and sacred honor," must 
be pledged, and looming darkly in the dim distance, rose a 
jjrison and a gallows. But over this sombre scene, penetra- 
ting its darkness with her own pure light, and gilding with 
glorious brightness even the instrument of a felon's death, 
hovered the Spirit of Liberty. They knew they must win her 
by their oavu action. 

*' Who would he frci- must theuiet.^lvt."^ strike tlio blo>T." 

And their choice was made — a noble choice, and nobly 
maintained ! The events of that period are familiar to you all. 
I need not tell you how the rudderless and unrigged ships 
rotted in our harbor, or were burned to the water's edge 
with the rice and indigo that freighted them ; nor need I re- 
mind you that these determined men had pledged themselves 
to fire their houses, rather than they should afford shelter to 
an enemy. Well might the President of the Continental 



13 

Congress declare that in this they had given ''an instance of 
heroic principle not excelled by an}^, and equalled but by 
few in history." But I am not pronouncing a panagyric — 
my part is to breathe life, if I may, into the dead past, and 
bid you note its acts, and kindle at its glorious example. Did 
I say the dead past? Such a past never dies! The men 
of that year, 1775, the men who drew up the Declaration of 
the Rights by which, in language temperate, yet firm, they 
avouch themselves enthled to all the privileges and immuni- 
ties of Englishmen, who stood prepared to defend that dec- 
laration with their lives, have engraved their names on the 
corner-stone of our political edifice in characters that shall 
never be effaced. Even now these men — Bulloch and Hab- 
ersham — Jones and Walton — Telfair and Tattnall — Mcintosh 
and Elbert — Houston, and Screven, and Baker, and many more 
equally brave and noble spirits, are present with us. Their 
calm, earnest eyes seem to abjure us to preserve unimpaired the 
heritage won with such care and perils. They planted the seed 
of that noble tree which this day lifts itself so proudly to the 
light and air of Heaven, and shelters us so securely beneath 
its spreading branches. Withered be the sacrilegious hand 
that would mar its glorious beauty ! It is not without a 
deeper meaning than may be recognized at a glance, that we 
have said, ''they planted the seed,'^ for in their action lay 
the germ of all that we have been, are, or may hope to be, 
as a people. They stamped their impress, not on their age 
only, but, as we hope, on their native land, for all time. Read 
their utterances in the public records of the day, and you will 
be surprised to perceive how simple, calm, and even concilia- 
tory, they were in manner, how unyielding in principle — 
gentle as the whispering wave — stern and unbending as the 
granite rock. The '^siiaviter in tnodo et fortiter in re" 
have never been carried farther. And thus it is with all truly 
great actions. It is the shallow brook that brawls and foams 
along its course — the deep stream flows silently on ; yet a child 
may dam up the first, while the last sweeps from its way with 
irresistible power whatever would obstruct its majestic career. 



14 

Once, in the later history of Georgia, she has stood opposed 
to the action of the Government for the time being. The cir- 
cumstances which placed her in that position are too recent 
to need recapitulation. Yon remember how the General 
Government fulminated its edicts; how the very ministries of 
our religious faith were made to speak the language of our 
enemies ; and you remember too with what calmness, yet, 
with what immoveable constancy, he who then held ihe helm 
of State, steered us through all opposition to the point to 
which right and honor marshaled us. 

It is in this view that the present acquires its chief impor- 
tance — it is the Uttle seed within which lies folded the great 
interests of the future. Self-styled philosophers may mock 
at the history which makes the whole destinies of the 
race of man depend on the single act of a single pair ; but 
observation and experience confirm its truth. In every age 
and in every land there are those who may in this sense be 
called representative men — men whose characters shall be 
reflected in their race and mould their fortunes to the latest 
time, or till some other of equal power shall give a counter 
direction to the forces of society. Vve live not then for our- 
selves alone, a conviction that may well stimulate us to high 
thought and noble action. Nor are those men who shine as 
stars in the firmament of history, by whose light we may 
steer our barks over the wide ocean of time, always those 
whom nature or fortune has placed in the most prominent 
positions, or gifted with the greatest powers. A recent histo- 
rian says: '• The treaties of Aix la Chapelle had been nego- 
tiated by the ablest statesmen of Europe in the splendid 
forms of Monarchical Diplomacy. They believed themselves 
the arbiters of mankind, the pacificators ot the world. 

*^ At the very time of the Congress of Aix la Chapelle, the 
woods of Virginia sheltered the youthful George Washing- 
ton. A stripling surveyor in the woods, with no companion 
but his unlettered associates, and no implements of science 
but his compass and chain, he contrasted strangely with the 
imperial magnificence of the Congress of Aix la Chapelle. 



15 

And yet God had selected not Kaunidz. (the Ambassador of 
Austria,) nor Newcastle, (the Minister of England,) — not a 
Monarch of the House of Hapsburg, nor of Hanover, but 
the Virginia stri|)pling, to give an impulse to human affairs, 
and, as far as events can depend on an individual, had placed 
the rights and the destinies of countless millions in his keep- 
ing." 

Let us glance our eyes along the ma|) of the world in the 
early part of the sixteenth century. Great names meet us there. 
In England, Ho^riry VUL haughty and arrogant — in France. 
Francis I, one of the most chivairic of monarchs — in Spain, 
Charles the V, who added to his Imperial dignities the title 
by election of Emperor of Germany. These men seemed no 
less inquahty than in rank. They attracted the eyes and 
thoughts of all the living men of their time. They met in 
peaceful pageants, and the gorgeous display of the Field of 
the Cloth of Gold remains to this day without a rival in our 
imagination. They met in war, and played at the game 
right royally, staking and losing Kingdoms at a blow. 
Amoijg these more prominent figures, there rises upon us 
one which seems strangely our ot" place — tlie son of a poor 
man in an insignificant town in the heart of Germany. The 
Kings and the Emperors may he forgotten ; but tor the re- 
cords oT history they would already have perished 
from the world, on v\^hich they left little trace; but while 
the world endures, v»"hile men are thronging towards the 
open portals of eternity, and inquiring with the intensest in- 
terest for the way of life, that German boy will be remem- 
bered. He broke the fetters from the mind of universal man. 
The world can never be again what it would have been 
without Martin Luther. 

And wiiat in both tijc^-e cases gave infiuence to the man 
and lifted him not above liis contemporaries only, but above 
tlie men of all time? There were men as brave as Wash- 
ington in the Revolutionary War, priests as learned as Luther 
in the sixteenth century, soldiers and priests more ambi- 
tious of station and influence, more determined to be great 



16 

than they. To truth, they sought not greatness : they coveted 
neither power, nor renown ; they simply Ibllowed the com- 
mands of 

"Duty, 8tern laught'n' of the voice of God." 

They followed her often reluctantly, feeling the Cross and 
jjot always seeing the Crown. They thought Uttle of them- 
selves and much of their work. Let those who would he 
remembered as they are, do like them. 

Perhaps it may be said that only at great eras of history is 
it vouchsafed to a single man to rise thus above his fellows. 
To this I answer, it is the man who makes the era, not the 
era, the man. Our ideal ever lies in the present and tlie 
actual — a possibility to be achieved — even as the statue lies 
in the yel unchiselled marble, waiting hut the touch of genius 
to wake it into life. There are always duties to be performed, 
sacrifices for others to be patiently endured, wrongs to be 
combatted, rights to be enforced ; and so true greatness may 
be won, and our names, receiving the emblazonment of histo- 
ly, may become a world's treasured possession. 

What ideal is there that may not be wrought out in our 
own time ? We talk of chivalry as of the things of the 
past. The glory of chivalry was that it submitted to self- 
denial, endiu'ed hardship and put life in ])eril for a noble cause. 
Its mailed hand wrung from the gripe of the oppressor his 
ill-gotten gain ; it unclasped the fetters of the enslaved ; it 
lilled up the down-trodden; in its strength the feeble found 
refuge, and the poor were fed by its bounty. As in his se- 
cluded cloister the monk of the middle ages preserved amid 
surrounding darkness a feeble glimmering of intellectual 
light, and some sparks of that holier flame from which the 
fires of our christian altars were afterwards rekindled, so the 
knight errant of those days kept alive in men's hearts the 
ideas of truth and honor, of justice and nobleness, which 
were in danger of being crushed and trampled out beneath 
the feet of the thronging tribes of men in their onward 
march. 

At length, the wildly confused and warring elements of 



17 

society subsided into tranquility. Nations and governments 
sprang into being where had once been only savage hordes. 
A new power arose in the world — the power of the people — 
and their will and their force, embodied in the law, took the 
place of the Knight's strong arm. In her unsleeping vigilance 
we may rest secure. Under her protection Christianity has 
come forth from the cloister, teaching man to be merciful, 
because, 

"All souls that were, were forfeit once ; 

And He that might the vantage best have took, 

Found out the Remedy." 

Christianity wins from free warm hearts, what Chivalry forced 
from unwiUing hands. At her appeal, the miser unlocks his 
stores, the oppressor lays aside his rod and chain, and man, 
bent beneath the load of ceaseless labor, and brutalized by 
vice, lifts himself upward toward God, and rejoices in the 
light of His countenance. Had Christianity, then, the uni- 
versal sway which poetry has hymned and prophecy assured 
to her, we might fold our arm.s in idle enjoyment and feel 
that the determined will, the daring spirit, and the heroic 
heart of the knight, were as much things of the past as the 
iron mail in which he was accustomed to encase himself 
But such is not our happy experience. The glories of the 
Age of Gold have passed away^ and that happier era when 
the redeemed earth shall brighten in the rays of the Heaven 
to which it is rising, has not yet come. Poets may dream 
their dreams, self-complacent philosophers may map out their 
Utopias, but practical men — men of action, as well as of 
thought, men who live in no dream-land, but in the actual 
world, these men know that there is work around us that will 
task the most energetic, and the most daring spirit— work, be- 
fore which we might well stand appalled, but that there comes 
to us, sounding through the ages, that old battle-cry, " God 
FOR THE Right! " The castles in which grim prejudice 
has entrenched itself are to be stormed. They are strong, 
and multitudes have mustered to their defence ; let no 
man gird himself for the combat who is not prepared to peril 
3 



18 

property, station, friends, life, and what is dearer still, good 
NAME. The dungeons in which ignorance has shut her cap- 
tives, must be thrown open to the light of day : but he that 
would perform the task must descend himself and breathe 
their pestiferous air. The plague-smitten victims of vice 
must be ministered to ; but the moral surgeons who devote 
themselves to their treatment, ere entering the hospitals in 
which they lie, must divorce tliemselves from all that men 
call pleasure, and learn to look, with an almost divine charity, 
on what usually inspires only disgust and loathing. Is not 
the very spirit of knight-errantry — the spirit which shone 
gloriously though all its fantastic forms, in those who 
gird themselves for this contest ? May not the man of to- 
day find as noble a field for his powers as did any of those 
whose names we have seen blazoned on the tablets of his- 
tory ? Can we not find scope for a charity as self-denying, 
as world-wide, as high-hearted, as that of Oglethorpe? If it 
be not ours to lay the corner-stone, as did he, to a new 
State, we may put the key-stone to the arch, which shall give 
stability to all that has been already done. By the silent 
influence of a noble, self-devoted life, by the fearless utter- 
ance of truth, by manly action in the cause of right, we may 
make this, our native State, worthy of its founder, and 
of the gifts with which Heaven has so richly endowed it. 
One characteristic marks the truly great man of every age: 
he thinks much of his work, and little of himself. Oglethorpe 
visits the poor gentleman, for a gentleman he still is, in his 
prison. He sees the heavy eye, which strives in vain to 
brighten on his entrance, the languid movement where once 
all was brisk cheerfulness, the frame formerly erect with 
manly dignity, now bowed and shrunken ; he sees all this ; 
he does more than see, he feels it, and he asks not how 
James Oglethorpe may make his name great, but how he 
may bring new life, and health, and hope, to these sad 
wrecks. He has found his work and does it— that's all. 
Washint;(on was pre-eminent for tliis quality of greatness. 
Nature had endowed him with military instincts. He has 



19 

a prospect of obtaining service in the navy of Great Britain. 
His firstcrui.se would iiave i)een with Adniinil Vrniioii mi an 
expedition which offered peculiar fascinations 1o the adven- 
turous spirit of youth— but his widowed mother opposed il, 
and his trunk, aheady borne to the vessel, is recalled — let 
the youth who considers it a proof of manhood never to 
submit his will to another's, especially if that other ho a 
woman, hear— and he turns with cheerfulness to hischaui and 
compass. The fathers of the Revolution,did they, think you, 
spend much time in speculating how they might best achieve 
honor for themselves? Did they plan the drama of the Rev- 
olution and, like skilful actors, suit themselves with parts? 
No ! they did the work of tlie day and hour, careful only, 
whatever it was, that it should l)e done well. They reared 
the fair temple of our independence, unconscious that on its 
columns their own names would be inscribed. A few years 
later, there arose in another land revolutionists more dra- 
matic, who constructed after the most approved classic mod- 
els every act and scene of their great play. What came 
of that you know— how they mistook Ucense for liberty, and 

"Playod such ftvntastic tricks before higl) Heavt-n 
As made the angels weep." 

The works on which Napoleon Bonaparte rested his hopes 
of fame — those in which the sentiment of personal aggran- 
dizement and personal glory lived as the animating spirit — 
the empires which he overturned, — the sham republics he 
constituted — the dynasties he established — over these the 
deep sea wave ot Time has swept and they are gone. The 
landmarks which he destroyed, have been restored, and had 
these things made the sum of his life, with all the brilliancy 
of his genius and the dazzling splendor of his military prow- 
ess, he would have left only 

■ The name at whiclt the world grew pale. 

To point a moral, or adorn a tale. 

But his true work — that which tiad been prepared for Inm 
by the world's Great Ruler — was done too and well done — 
a people drunk with fury were checked and curbed in their 



20 

mad course — the dethroned Majesty of law was re-estab- 
lished — the financial credit of a great bnt nearly bankrupt 
land was restored — and on the territory of those vanished 
Empires and Republics, he has left enduring monuments of 
his power and his genius, in an improved police, in canals 
which have opened to their produce the markets of distant 
countries, and roads which have made over hitherto inacces- 
sible mountains, a highway for Europe. 

It is not then by direct efforts to aggrandize themselves — 
it is not by waiting for extraordinary occasions of action that 
men build up a great name — a name which the muse of his- 
tory shall delight to engrave upon her tablets — which their 
fellow men shall receive from her with reverence and hand 
down from generation to generation. 

Time was indeed when the world's heroes were such as the 
boy conqueror of Macedon, weeping for more worlds to con- 
quer and quenching alike his grief and his greatness in mad 
debauch, or the selfish destroyer of Roman liberty ; but the 
world has grown wiser, and has learned to feel more reve- 
rence for a benefactor than for a destroyer of mankind. The 
verdict of history is but the expression of the public senti- 
ment of the age in which it is written, and we feel that 

Even now the voice is heard 

O'er the waters calm and clear ; 
Even now the wave is stirred, 

With an Angel presence near, 
And a better ''Age of Gold" 
Cometh as the Bard foretold. 

When no war shall bid men bleed 

To o'erthrow a hostile throne, 
Or to change a people's creed 

That may differ from their own ; 
But 'neath Truth's unclouded sun 
Right and Power shall aye be one." 

On the fair pages of our annals have been recorded many 
honorable names — some that well deserve to be associated 
with the men of 1733 and of 1776. Statesmen — they have 
filled with honor offices of trust in their own State, or under 



21 

the Federal Government. In the Navy of the United States 
they have fearlessly braved on every sea " the battle and the 
breeze," and while the stars and stripes which waved above 
them reminded them that it was to the whole country they 
had pledged service and life, they still felt that one star in 
that brilliant constellation beamed for them with purer and 
brighter hglitthan any other — the Georgi/nrn Sidti.s. Soldiers, 
they have fought gallantly and died bravely — let the battle- 
fields of Mexico and the lionored dust wliich sleeps in yon- 
der church yard tell that tale. But 1 would this day lay a 
chaplet on the graves of men whose conflicts and whose tri- 
umphs were connected not with the battlefield, but with the 
forum. Let their names be breathed in tender accents, for 
aft'ection still weeps upon their tombs. We cannot speak of 
them as we have done of men of the past, for they were our 
contemporaries and our fellow-citizens — treading the same 
streets, mingling in the same scenes with ourselves — they 
were our friends, — we have caught fervor from their kindling 
eyes — inspiration from their glowing lips — courage from the 
grasp of tlieir hands. We have missed tliem from our daily 
walks, and felt a painful sense of loss as we listened in vain 
for tlie lamiliar voice, and souglit in vain the quick and kind- 
ly glance. You, gentlemen, of the Georgia Historical Socie- 
ty, liave peculiar cause for these feelings, for both were active 
members of your Association, and one of them, your first 
President. 

How vividly rises before me the slight but well knit, active 
form, the pale face, the thoughtful brow, the earnest eyes 
which made up the impressive aspect of Robert M. Charlton, 
the acute lawyer, the upright Judge, the scholar, the poet, the 
fond and tender father, the true and devoted husband, the chris- 
tian, '* vixit jnoriturus^ moritxir que victurus in seternwm. " 
It has been the custom to speak of the legal profession as ne- 
cessarily inimical to t'lose qualities which, according to the 
great English Satirist, mark the noblest work of God, "an 
honest man"! but who ever knew Robert M. Charlton and 
would have hesitated to confide in his lightest v/ord as in a 



22 

contract signed and sealed ; what a fountain of lender sTm 
patliies, of life-giving charily was jiis heart! Over quirk, 
natural sensihilities the imaginative teniperatnent of the poet 
shed brighter and warmer hues — and what fervor did his 
poetry lend to his logic, what grace to his oratory ! We 
may seem to have said much and yet we have not touched 
tliat wliich crowned and hallowed his every gift and every 
grace : these rare endowments were perfected witli the 
spirit and reflected visibly to every eye, the hght of Heaven. 
Say, then, he is dead ! Believe it not : his spirit lives not 
in Heaven more surely, than his influence remains a living 
power on earth. The profession he adorned is the purer in 
his native State — the city to which he belonged is the more 
lionored, for his life. His memory is one of our treasured 
possessions — we will guard it well — 

" Green t)c the turf above thee, 

Friend of iny earlier days! 
None knew thee but to love the<', 

None named thee but to praijio." 

Beside the warm, living portrahnre which we are conscious 
our words have bnt faintly presented, we would place ano- 
ther, more grand, it may be, in its proportions, though less 
warm in its coloring, and less illuminated by that tender light 
with which the heart halos the pictures it enshrines. 

To those who met him in the daily walks of life, John 
JVlacpherson Berrien is recalled, as one who exhibited in a 
very remarkable degree, the graceful courtesy of the pol- 
ished gentleman, and the elegant cultivation of the thorough- 
ly furnished scholar. In some respects, he belonged to ano- 
ther age than ours. The busy man of the present day shows 
himself what he is ; he moves with hurried step, and has 
few words and fewer mere courtesies to spare. No one could 
suspect Judge Berrien of being an idle man, yet who ever 
knew him betrayed by hurry into the forgetfulness of the 
smallest courtesy, whether to his friends in the intercourse of 
society, in the senate, or to his antagonists at the bar? It was 
there that he showed great(i5fr7t/m2,5l the bar, that his genius 



23 

rose triumphant. Who that ever saw him there, his face ra- 
diant with the glow of conscious power — who that ever heard 
those tones which rang on the charmed ear Uke the notes of 
a silver clarion, can forget the impression he made ! Who 
that ever hstened to his plea but can remember how he 
swayed his judgment, fired his heart, and influenced his 
whole being at his will ! With him died, as we believe, the 
greatest advocate not of Georgia only but of the United 
States. Webster's granite mind dealt with great constitution- 
al questions with unequalled power, but as an advocate at the 
bar, the exquisite tact, the soul-subduing eloquence of Ber- 
rien surpassed even him. It will be long, ere in this State, or 
in this Union, we shall find for him among living men a rival, 
or a peer. If Charlton's grave should be decked with the 
green turf and shadowed by the over-arching boughs which 
poets love, the monument of John Macpherson Berrien 
should be of purest marble, polished and wrought with the 
most artistic skill. His State's men will never hear his name 
without a glow of pride. 

Charlton ! Berrien ! Their names have become historic 
in their native State. You, gentlemen, will not suffer them 
to perish ; especially will it be your pride and pleasiu'e to 
cherish that of John McPherson Berrien, your first President. 

We have read from the tablets of history the record of 
some of those names, preserved from oblivion by their great 
and good qualities. We have seen that they lived not for 
themselves or for their age alone, but for the world and for 
all time. We have endeavored also to show that the oppor- 
tunity for noble action died not with them, that the world 
has still work to do which requires strong hands and pure 
hearts, and though it crown not the workers with laurels 
while they live, history will not fail to write their names upon 
lier page and commit it to your faithful keeping. It is yours 
to preserve green the memory of the honored dead. From 
your hands, the living wait their reward — the proud reward 
of a name that shall be to children and to children's children 
a star guiding them in safety aitd honor through midnight 



24 

glooms and over trackless seas. We all expect your verdict; 
let it be faithful and impartial. 

"Who that surveys this span of eaith we press, 
This speck of life in Time's great wilderness, 
This narrow isthmus 'twixt two boimdless seas, 
The past, the future — two eternities ! 
Would sully the bright spot, or leave it bare, 
When he might build him a proud temple there, 
A name, that long shall hallow all its space, , 
And be each purer soul's high resting place." 







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